Airports irritated Aryn greatly. There was the TSA, which happened in a semi-chaotic state of consciousness. There would be the baggage dropoff first, for which she had a lot of baggage. Moving cities wasn’t exactly easy. And it annoyed her that they wanted her to take off her belt.

  Why did they even want her to take off the belt? It kept her pants up and stopped her from walking with makeshift clam-digger pants.

  As if that wasn’t enough, she had to deal with the fact that people occasionally shot glances at her for her less than typical height. She stood at six feet and two inches with her shoes off. With her typical boots on, she began to barely scratch the roof of the metal detectors.

  And then there were the airport chairs, god forbid anyone badmouth the airport chairs. For surely, the airport chairs were nothing but the paragon of comfort? Which was why she spent the better part of eight minutes wiggling her jeans on the surface to find a position that wouldn’t cause scoliosis in the long run.

  Then there were the vending machines. She tossed in the note, watching as the machine slurped the green bill greedily like a man seeing water in the Sahara. Then there was the whirring and processing as she selected her drink- Just water. She was on a diet, after all.

  The machine continues to beep and hum before the water bottle freed itself from the clutches of the metallic receptacle holding it in place.

  Come to mama. She thought.

  And then, the water bottle pressed up against the surface of the fogged up glass,the plastic wrapper of the bottle squishing up face first against it like children would press their cheek to the glass window of a candy store.

  Aryn had enough today, she was not in a good mood to begin with and to travel on a day like this was even more annoying. She let out a frustrated growl at the vending machine, drawing unwanted and questioning glances.

  She had to take deep breaths to control her mood today. Breathe, Aryn, breathe, just like that. Inhale. One, two, three, four, five… Hold. One, two, three, four, five… Exhale…

  A tall slender man approached. He stood at about the same height, perhaps an inch shorter, given that he wore less padded shoes. He wore a crew cut and had Ray Ban aviators on, as evidenced by the very conspicuous logo on the bottom of one of the polarized lenses. She questioned what sort of madman wore glasses in the middle of the night.

  She wondered if he served in the military, given the bomber jacket that had the US Navy branding. She didn’t bother to greet him directly, instead shooting him an awkward sidelong gaze as she folded her arms.

  Anyone could get one of those. She thought to herself as she eyed the jacket.

  Her father was a military man, she did not like her dad very much and she didn’t have a lot of respect for the institution for that reason. She ran her hands through her silver hair, swallowing a few gulps of saliva to quench and wet her irritated throat from all the growling she’d been doing.

  The tall man walked over before asking politely, “May I?”

  “Yeah, but it’s broken, it got stuck,” she said in a small tone, her irritation apparent.

  The man gave her a small smile, one that she could tell reached his eyes despite the glasses. For some reason, that sent another spark of irritation down her spine, it was seven in the evening and this gent was wearing sunglasses indoors.

  Bet he thinks he’s all cool and shit. She thought once more on an incoherent note.

  The man fed his own dollar bill to the machine, which it consumed with equal fervor. Perhaps the machine was good for one thing and that was swallowing dollars, not vending.

  He ordered another water bottle, the machine went through the same series of hums and beeps before finally dropping a second water bottle. The second water bottle suplexed the first one down into the gutter with a crackle and a thump.

  He ducked down in a squat and reached into the vending machine to pull out a water bottle, his pale skin almost translucent in the white light. He pulled out the two water bottles, offering the first one to her.

  Her irritation was a bit tempered as she took the water bottle, a bit embarrassed at the fact that she couldn’t have handled this very simple situation easily. She took the bottle, mouthing profanities to herself before finally looking at the man.

  “Thanks,” she said weakly.

  The man stood up and dusted his jacket off before cracking open his water bottle. His eyes held something intrinsically predatory, was it the military that did this to him? It can’t possibly be.

  It was the face, the way the jaw was so gaunt and hollowed out in a way that made him look animalistic, or the pale skin and the crew cut that only seemed to make his face seem sharper. Maybe it was the hunter eyes with green irises or the fact that he had-

  Fangs.

  She noted mentally that the man had fangs, a vampire. She played with the black leather choker on her neck, her index brushing over the metal ring that splayed over Adam's apple.

  “Where are you headed to?,” he asked while re-capping his bottle.

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  She was snapped out of her train of thought as she found her voice to answer, “LAX.”

  “It’s a nice city. Good for Lycans.”

  She felt her hairs stand on end upon that deduction. Suddenly, all of her fight-or-flight senses told her to jump or run or freeze or do something-

  “Oh, and the silver hair is a giveaway. If you’re trying to go undercover, you should dye it.”

  The hair, the silver hair, right… How could she have forgotten? Her brain was fried, as it always was during full moon days. But the way he phrased it triggered another surge of irritation through her body. She felt like throwing verbal inflictions.

  “And why does it matter to you, huh?,” she asked defensively.

  “It doesn’t,” the man confessed, “And you may wanna sleep through the flight, it takes quite a while. And the full moon won’t do you any favors. Did you happen to book business class? It’s a long ride.”

  “I can book whatever the hell I want.”

  She strutted away angrily and sat down by her bags once more outside the plane terminal. She was welcomed once more by the airport chair which seemed to have no better business than to varnish her butt by restricting her blood flow.

  She sighed as she drank the water bottle. She felt a bit bad that she was this irritable today, everything seemed to attack her today and she attacked them back with equal ferocity, it just seemed to be in her nature.

  I’m being a jerk. I should sleep through the full moon.

  It was against her better nature to stay awake on a full moon. It was on days like this that she was grateful that she was a Lycan rather than a full-blooded werewolf. She couldn’t imagine tearing off her clothes and assaulting everyone in the airport. She could at least keep her lunar assaults to a verbal medium.

  She rubbed her temples, she felt like throwing up, she wondered if women of other species felt this way. Periodic irritation on a monthly basis? Right, periods, that’s what the humans called that term, she’d almost forgotten from how moody she’d become as of recent.

  She downed a tablet of Tylenol to deal with the pounding headache. She cursed her luck. If she hadn’t botched that homicide case, she’d still be in New York, celebrating her profession as a hardboiled detective.

  But presiding in reality, she had to come to terms with the fact that LA would be a new start, and as that vampiric man had said so succinctly, LA was in fact a great city for the supernatural. After all, it was the biggest headquarters of modern Hawsborne.

  She boarded her flight, grabbing her neck pillow like a lifeline. She stepped in and settled into her aisle, an economy seat for she could not seem to justify spending a few hundred dollars more to ride in business class. She stretched her legs out before wrapping the grey pillow around her neck. The seat was angled in a way that maximum discomfort was ensured, and part of her suddenly felt like two hundred extra dollars for the business class seat (despite the surge fees) was a steal.

  Despite it all, she persevered with her neck pillow, listening mindlessly to the pre-flight safety demonstration as the flight attendants droned on about what could be anything but gibberish… Until the pull of sleep tugged on her eyelids.

  The full moon nightmares were always semi-lucid. She knew it was happening to her, yet she remained powerless. It was always the same thing, her dad coming home.

  The man was the definition of a Lycan alpha, throwing his weight around, his shoulders bobbing back and forth as he walked with swagger. Being a Vietnamese Lycan, he had to prove that he was one of the ‘Americans’. He was confident and was a natural in the leading position. He would do brave things when possible; he’d carry his injured mates across forests where open gunfire was a possibility, he’d throw back a grenade, he would come home and yell at her mother incessantly-

  She shook awake in a state of semi-consciousness, rubbing her temples. It was that damned pounding again, she figured that she couldn’t take more than two Advil a day. Her doctors would have a heart attack.

  She figured she’d rather not risk it with her health and went back to sleep.

  Where was she? Her father. Perfect in standing, a true monster behind closed doors. The first thing he’d do as he came home was to yell at the top of his lungs. Thankfully the home they had happened to be residing in were built with thick walls, unlike the plaster of most American homes. Then one of two things happened.

  One, her mother took it like an obedient little housewife, where she would walk away, eyes brimming with fat tears and a look that screamed nothing but betrayal. Or rather, two, her mother would yell back in moments of defiance, seeking basic affection.

  Aryn had borne witness to both instances. And if one had to chance upon a guess, the latter leads to an escalation of the scenario. The escalation ends with either a red handprint on the left cheek or a black eye to take to bed for supper.

  She could remember the loud yells as she would walk in on their ‘familial bonding’. Her father would shoot her a glare to vaporize pigeons on the spot. Aryn would take a few steps back before he would coldly say, “Go to your room.”

  Then there were the memories of her climbing stairs, her little feet padding up the carpeted surface as she tried to distance herself from that waking nightmare. She felt like her whole senses were aflame. But it felt like she could never run and the world was swallowing her up from underneath her feet-

  “This is your captain speaking,” a smooth, gruff voice spoke from the overhead speaker, shaking her out of her beauty sleep.

  She awoke from her Advil induced drowsiness, she had survived the length of the flight, albeit her knees were weak and palms were sweaty. She had to get her choker off, the perspiration had gathered underneath it uncomfortably.

  The pilot continued, “We’ll be landing at LAX in uh… Ten minutes, give or take. The weather’s breezy, have a great time in sunny California. Even if it is the middle of the night.”

  The air hostesses came forth to check on the passengers to see if their seatbelts were buckled, their tray tables pushed up and the windows propped open. Aryn hadn’t bothered to take off her seatbelt since boarding, so she figured she wouldn’t really have to change that.

  She unhooked her choker, rubbing the reddened, clammy skin underneath it. After a few minutes, she could see the street lights grow closer as the bird prepared to touch down. That was when she put her choker back on.

  She looked out at the city she would be living in for the time being, her reflection faintly visible in the reinforced windows, reflecting her bloodshot eyes back at her, not to mention the pallor that gripped her being that granted her the appearance of a beached whale. This was LA. Not quite the image of the Californian beach city, but then again, it was 2 AM in the night.

  Her head was throbbing and the moon seemed to mock her as they touched down at LAX. She cursed under her breath, wondering why she was even alive in the first place. But she persisted, knowing that tomorrow, the moon would be a waxing gibbous, and that she’d have the last laugh for the remainder of the new month.